Samantha Bankston

The ontologies of Slavoj Žižek and Gilles Deleuze are incommensurable. Rather than appropriate one at the expense of the other, this essay uses Žižek’s notion of parallax to think the two philosophers together, without mediation. Both Deleuze and Žižek provide mirrored philosophical images, with the point of divergence being absolute lack. Deleuze argues that lack, or the being of negation, is an error of representational understanding, while Žižek conceives his philosophy as being driven by absolute lack. A stark opponent of Žižek’s precursor, Hegel, Deleuze rejects opposition as a constitutive feature of reality. However, Žižek mirrors Deleuze’s very concepts in his Lacanian reading of Hegel, while said concepts retain identical terms. For instance, Žižek calls l’objet petit a “difference,” while his term for absolute negation is “repetition,” and finally, he refers to his philosophical system as the “non-All”. These singular concepts in Žižek’s thought share an identical language with that of Deleuze. Deleuze’s philosophy is one of “difference,” while its mode of proliferation is “repetition,” and finally, he often refers to his philosophy as the “One-All”. Mapping these common terms that do not denote a common language, but incommensurable, inverse logics, it becomes evident that Deleuze and Žižek are mirror images of one another, infinitely fragmenting across the expanse of their respective positions. Thus, by triangulating ontology from their unique perspectives, a new ontological shift emerges—one that resists mediation and admixture

Deleuze's concept of 'becoming' provides the key to his notoriously complex metaphysics, yet it has not been systematized until now. Bankston tracks the concept of becoming and its underlying temporal processes across Deleuze's writings, arguing that expressions of becoming(s) appear in two modes of temporality: an appropriation of Nietzsche's eternal return (the becoming of the event), and Bergsonian duration (the becoming of sensation). Overturning the criticisms launched by Žižek and Badiou, with conceptual encounters between Bergson, Nietzsche, Leibniz, Borges, Klossowski, and Proust, the newly charted concept of double becoming provides a roadmap to the totality of Deleuze's philosophy. Bankston systematizes Deleuze's multi-mirrored universe where form and content infinitely refract in a vital kaleidoscope of becoming" -- Amazon.com.